


Shatter

by N1ghtshade



Series: Pacific Rim scribblings [6]
Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Werecreature AU, Weredragon (is that a thing?) Mako, werewolf raleigh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-11
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-21 12:47:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 18,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14285235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/N1ghtshade/pseuds/N1ghtshade
Summary: Pacific Rim Werecreature AU. After werewolf feral Raleigh Becket is blamed for the death of his human brother and handler in the Knifehead fight, he's sent to the Wall. Five years later, Stacker Pentecost buys him back, and Raleigh is forced to confront his past and his future when he meets Mako, who is hiding her own dangerous secret.





	1. Prologue-Anchorage Feral Institution-March 2020

**Author's Note:**

> I did a massive expansion of my short work “Broken Hearts”. I did make a few modifications to the worldbuilding I did, but it’s not extensive. Mako is still from a dragon bloodline, Raleigh is a “feral” after being bitten as a teenager, and most of the societal prejudices are the same. However, in this version, Yancy was never bitten and never turned feral before Knifehead. I know I have so many WIPs and REALLY shouldn’t start another story…but this just wouldn’t leave me alone.

Raleigh can feel the wire cage mesh digging into his legs and shoulder. He shifts, trying to take the pressure off his still-healing scars. He tries to ignore the other ferals howling, clawing, snapping at anything they can reach. The one in the cage on his right almost took his ear off, which is why he’s been leaning to the left even though it hurts his shoulder. Problem is, the feral on his left is just as vicious, except he doesn’t bite. He just keeps talking, an endless angry muttering. “No one will adopt you. They put you here to die, after what you did to your brother.”

The other feral’s taunts feel like a knife in Raleigh’s heart. He whimpers, curling on the floor of the cage. “They’re just keeping you here as a formality. When no one comes for you, they’re going to put you down.”  
It's nothing he doesn’t deserve. Raleigh doesn’t want to die but he should. Yance is dead and it’s all his fault and he should pay for it. But he just wants his brother back. He wants Yance to come walking in and say it was all a mistake and let him out of this cage. But no one is going to come for him.   
He's never been caged before. Yance made sure of that. He knew how scared Raleigh was on the flight up to the Shatterdome when he saw the un-contracted ferals in the cargo section. It was so wrong to see people, actual people, in those tiny cages barely bigger than a dog would have.   
"Will they make me get in one of those?" he'd asked, panicky, when he watched the ferals, some shifted, some human, being loaded.  
"No. Not as long as I'm around." But now Yance is gone and no one cares if Raleigh is scared to be put in a cage.   
His one act of defiance, what little fight he has left, is not shifting. He knows sooner or later they'll force him to. But for now, he has control of that. He won't give them the satisfaction of that humiliation, not even when the wolf snarls under his skin and begs to be let out.  
"I just want my brother back." He didn't think anyone could hear him, but the other feral laughs.  
"Who cares what you want, freak? It’s your fault he’s dead." Raleigh curls up in the corner of the cramped cage and buries his face in his hands, sobbing. It is his fault. He should have listened. He was too confident and too desperate for a fight, and Yancy paid for it. _I should have died._ Yancy was the good one. Human. Useful without his brother. Raleigh is just a feral. He’s nothing without his handler.

He doesn’t get up again until two men come in. One of them has a jacket with the Pacific Perimeter Project logo on the shoulder. _They’re coming for Wall workers._ Anywhere in the coastal cities, the PPP is contracting all unowned ferals for the wall. People are saying it’s a good thing; that at least the ferals have some employment that actually wants them. But Raleigh’s seen the Wall, and what things are like there. The ferals the Wall has would probably be better off not working at all.

“No one wants that one.” Raleigh doesn’t have to look to know the shelter owner is pointing to him. _No one wants a disobedient feral who got his handler killed._  
“He’s good enough for the Wall. We’ll take whatever we can get, at this point.”


	2. Five Years Later: Sitka Section of the Anti-Kaiju Wall: June 19, 2025

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't help myself and posted one more chapter.

All Mako Mori knows about Raleigh Becket is before the Knifehead incident. She knows he was feral, and his brother was human. She also knows he knows her secret.

She remembers him from Anchorage, when _Sensei_ was Marshal there. Raleigh and his brother Yancy were inseparable. They were the only Jaeger pilot team who were not only siblings, but a feral and its handler. People had said there was too much of an inequality there, that a feral and a human would be incapable of Drift. The Becket Boys had gone and proved everyone wrong. Success had made Raleigh cocky and overconfident, and what little she remembered of him was a loud, brash, roughhousing boy in a man’s body. Or a wolf’s. Raleigh used to like to shift, and she’d often seen Yancy playing catch with him or wrestling out on the Jaeger launch platforms when the weather wasn’t awful.

Mako had always avoided Raleigh. Not just because he was too loud and rambunctious and rough, but because one feral could always scent another. And _Sensei_ had promised Mako she’d never have to be registered.

Mako fears her feral side more than most, because hers isn’t a wolf or cat or dog or other normal creature. No. She’s a dragon. As far as she knows, the only one. It’s in her family’s blood, so she isn’t sure if she even technically qualifies as a feral, but she doesn’t think in the middle of a war anyone is concerned about legal technicalities. And her real fear is that, since the shifting didn’t manifest until after the Onibaba attack, that people will think she’s actually shifting into a Kaiju. She’s not. But she knows what people will think.

Unfortunately Raleigh was too annoyingly pushy for her to avoid him altogether. She was reading, alone up in the hangar bays watching techs repairing Romeo Blue, and she hit him with her book when he swung himself up on a girder beside her.

“So what’s the story, Max?” He called her that whenever he saw her, and she hated it.

“Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.” She resisted the urge to smack him in the head with the book.

“Like seeing how much they got wrong?” Raleigh asked, and then slid closer to her. “I’d have thought you’d be more a “Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” kind of reader.” She wondered if that was meant to call her out. But how could he have seen the dragon mark on her shoulder? She made sure to keep it covered whenever she was training, so no one could see the way it moved and pulsed with light.

“Haven’t read it.” She knew her voice sounded shaky. She tried to swing off her girder but he caught her arm.

“You don’t need to. You’re more interesting than that book, _feral_.” In that moment, she was afraid of him. Genuinely terrified that he was either going to out her to everyone there, and demand that _Sensei_ register her, maybe even report him for breaking the rules on ferals. But what she was really afraid of was that he would try and make a deal with her for his silence. Calling her “interesting” was a pretty good indication of what kind of deal he’d want. She knew his reputation.

“Let go of me before I set you on fire, werewolf.” To her shock, he actually did.

“Easy, darlin’, just wanted to talk.”

“I don’t want to.” She was halfway down the ladder when he called back to her.

“If you ever do, I’m around. If you need someone who understands.” She went back to her bunk and sat on the bed with shaking hands, wondering when someone would come to take her away. No one ever did. She spent the next few days so shaken that _Sensei_ wanted to take her back to her therapist. He thought the nightmares were back. She saw Becket a few more times, but even though he tried to catch her attention she always ignored him. They couldn’t be seen together. Too many rumors, either about a relationship or about her secret, could come up. And then Knifehead happened, and she still feels guilty that she was relieved when she heard the PPDC sold Raleigh’s contract to the Wall construction. There, no one would believe him even if he decided to try and out her.

Now, sitting in a helicopter bound for the Sitka construction site, hands shaking as much as they were that day in her room, afraid Becket would turn on her, she feels more guilty than ever. _Sensei_ is sitting right beside her, but she feels a thousand miles away from him. He tried to get Becket back. Wanted to help him. She let him go to…to this. The site below her is a chaos of mud and yelling. She flips through the personnel file one more time. Becket, Raleigh. Age, 26. W118973 serial ID, W designating that he’s a wolf feral. Humans have no letters before their ID numbers. She has none. _Sensei_ kept his promise all these years. No one knows about the dragon except him and Geiszler and the Hansens...and Becket.

She hates the dragon a little more now. It’s the reason she can never be a pilot. She can do simulations all she wants; the Drift barriers installed for those prevent anyone getting too deep in her memories then. But in an actual Jaeger, there would be no protection. Her co-pilot would know instantly that she was feral, and there’s no telling if they’d report her or not. And it’s possible her dragon side would be too violent, too strong, and she could irreparably damage her co-pilot’s mind. They don’t let ferals drift with humans after…after Knifehead. She has to hide the truth but she also had to give up her dream.

The helicopter lands and she follows the Marshal out. She should be worried about being around this many ferals, and she is, a little. But Newt Geiszler just came up with an improved suppressant that should keep her hormone balance in check and keep her from seeming anything but human. She didn’t like it at first, when _Sensei_ got Newt involved. The man was too flighty, too curious. But he’s a genius when it comes to biochemistry. It’s been two years now since the last accidental fire she set.

She still worries when they walk past the packs of ferals headed to the worksite. There are dozens of cat-based ones headed straight for the top of the wall. She guesses it’s their balance skills. Even if they can land on their feet, though, she doesn’t think anyone could survive a fall from that height. She and the Marshal step inside a grimy shed that smells like a barn, where a man with a bushy black mustache that looks thicker than his entire arm sits behind a desk, checking off the ferals’ IDs as they pass. The Marshal doesn’t wait on ceremony, just cuts into the line.

“I’m here to buy out the contract on one of your ferals.”

The man glances up at him, watery blue eyes giving an impression of innocent confusion and helplessness. “Can’t do that here. You need to go see accounting and financials. Trailer over past the dozers.” He points.

“Thank you. Miss Mori, will you find him, please?” _Sensei_ walks away and Mako pulls out her file, trying to appear as professional as he was.

“We’re here for Raleigh Becket.”

“Don’t give me a name, sweetheart. I can only find ‘em by ID numbers.”

“W118973.” She cringes, both at the “sweetheart” and the fact that the only way Raleigh is known here is by his serial number. He’s just another piece of the equipment, like a bulldozer.

“An 11, huh? Didn’t even know we still had any of those. That’s a long time to make it on the Wall. Most don’t last a year.” She can’t begin to imagine how he can say that so casually. And She doesn’t want to think about the fact that for five years, Raleigh’s been doing something that should have killed him in one.

She knows what the man means. Lately a dozen or more reports have come out in the media about how badly ferals are mistreated at the Wall. There are reports from mostly humans who finally got a conscience about their actions, but also the ferals themselves. Mako has heard enough now, in the two years since the #breaktheWallofsilence movement started trending, to make her decide humans are worse than the Kaiju sometimes. She’s heard what happened to feral women, who could be assaulted and harassed but couldn’t report it to their superiors or they’d lose their jobs. She’d heard that half the feral crew working in Nome died last winter because when supply ships couldn’t get in, it was the ferals who had their rations first reduced, then cut altogether when bad weather continued. She tried not to remember all that when she saw that Raleigh’s file listed him as working in Nome from September 2023 to March 2025. She knows that any feral who shows the least potential to be violent is often forced into being part of the illegal night fights that pit feral against feral like a dog fight. She’s sure that’s been Raleigh’s fate, given his active combat background. It’s a shock that he isn’t dead.

“Huh. You’re right. He’s on third shift today, so he’s still in. Didn’t even remember we had an 11 left. Well, he’ll be in the far end of Kennel 4.” The man leads her out of the shack to a row of low buildings and into a hall that smells overpoweringly of bleach and wet dog, and she follows the numbers on the cages, trying not to look past them to the shivering, filthy ferals inside. She wants to take them all out of there. But she’s here for one.  
She almost walks right past him. What she expected was a vicious wolf, a monster hardened by anger. Instead, it’s a beaten, broken animal she finds in the cages. She doesn’t recognize the strong, confident golden wolf she remembers racing through the Anchorage Shatterdome in the emaciated, shivering animal with ragged ears and dirt-matted fur cringing in the back of its cage.  
She kneels down in the front of his cage. “I’m going to get you out.” He doesn’t even raise his head.  
The man hands over the keys to the collar and cage, a set of tarnished dog tags, and a stack of ragged, filthy clothing that smells overpoweringly of sweat and wet dog. “Here’s his things.” She opens the cage, hand shaking so much she can barely get the key in the lock. If she expected Raleigh to leap at her, overjoyed to be free, she would have been disappointed. He barely moves.

“I’m not them, Becket. I’m here to help.” At the sound of his name, his torn ears perk up a little. She wonders how long it’s been since he’s heard it. She’s glad he still answers to it. _Does he remember me?_ He stands up slowly and limps to the front of the cage, lowering his head so she can clip the leash hanging on the hook outside to his collar.

She’s forgotten just how massive he was. When he stands next to her his head comes to her elbow. Herc and Chuck aren't quite that big when they shift. Their dingo feral forms are longer and leaner. Raleigh always used to be bulkier, more solid. Now, even though he’s still broad-chested, he’s thinner than the Hansens are, and when he puts his head down he looks so much smaller. She walks him out to the door, where _Sensei_ meets her with the papers. He looks as shocked and horrified as she was at the state Becket is in. He gets hold of himself quickly and hands Mako some more paperwork to add to her file.

“Let’s get him to the Shatterdome.”


	3. Hong Kong Shatterdome-June 19

The first thing Mako does once they get off the ground in Sitka is get that collar off Becket’s neck. _We’re not going to force you to do anything you don’t want to do._ The Wall contractors use the collars not only to give painful shocks if a feral disobeys, but also to force shifts. She’s seen them before. Herc showed her his when he had his contract bought out from Sydney by _Sensei_. They carry two kinds of injections, which counterbalance the hormones in a shifter’s body, forcing them to assume one form or another, similar to the birth control band Mako wears to balance mood swings in combat simulations, and the one disguised as a watch band that Newt gave her to spread out the suppressant doses. But hers were a choice. She holds out the stack of clothes they brought, regulation PPDC issue and hopefully the right size. He’ll probably want to shift now that he can. To her surprise, he turns deliberately away, nudging the clothes aside with a paw.

Raleigh curls up on the floor at her feet, resting his head on his massive paws. If she couldn’t see his sides moving each time he took a breath, she could assume he was dead. He's covered in blood clotted gashes, remnants from the illegal fights if she had to guess. She doesn't know if they're infected, that will be for medical to determine. His fur is filthy, more brown than golden now, and large patches of it are missing along his back and neck and over his left shoulder, where the circuitry-shaped Drivesuit scars are visible. Each time he takes a breath, she can hear a rasping, damp sound in his lungs, like pneumonia hanging on. She glances at his work record, stapled lopsidedly to the back of the contract with _Sensei_ ’s signature. He’s had K-pneumonia three times, from breathing in contaminated water, apparently after diving in to rescue other workers who fell. It’s not an uncommon problem for workers on the Wall or fishermen. Getting even trace amounts of Kaiju Blue in your lungs will ruin them. She wonders if Raleigh will even be cleared medically for piloting with his lungs this bad.

She tries to avoid looking down at the bony, shivering wolf after she spreads one of the helicopter’s emergency blankets over him. _Five years ago, I never would have imagined Raleigh Becket could ever look so…broken._ She knows it’s been a slow change, from that confident, playful, seemingly invincible pilot to this sick, starving, almost slavishly obedient feral. But it’s happened all at once for her, and she can barely believe it. _How much is what they’ve done to him, and how much is his own guilt eating him up from the inside?_ She knows at the hearing Raleigh claimed he was responsible for Yancy’s death. She never found out if he was forced into saying that or if he actually believed it, but she’s fairly certain it was the latter. The pain in his face that day was genuine. She’d watched it all on the news broadcasts, unable to look away during the whole trial, until the final decision dropped Raleigh from the PPDC and sent him back to the closest feral holding center. After that, someone must have bought his contract for the wall, because the next thing she heard was that _Sensei_ had tracked him down working in Seward but Raleigh had refused to even consider being transferred back.

When they land in Hong Kong, it’s raining. Raleigh tries to get up but stumbles, ramming his nose into one of the seats and sitting back, shaking his head, clearly not used to flying anymore. She watches _Sensei_ reach down and lift the feral, blanket and all, and carry him out before setting him gently on the wet concrete. She holds the umbrella over them both. _The old Raleigh would have bitten someone’s hand off if anyone tried to pick him up like that._ Now, he just stands quietly, head down, still shivering slightly when the wind blows rain under the umbrella. She can tell the Marshal thought Raleigh would weigh more, because when he felt how light the wolf was he flinched and Mako saw his lips tighten and that little furrow show up between his eyes. Mako tries to stand as much as possible between Raleigh and the people on the loading dock. He doesn’t need more stares, more people feeling sorry for him. She thinks he still has enough pride that he wouldn’t want to be seen as weak.

She can’t protect him from Gottleib and Geiszler though. They’re wheeling a giant Kaiju brain specimen into the elevator when Mako and the Marshal walk in with the wolf. Newt’s eyes go big when he sees Raleigh. “Oh my god, is that Becket?” He shoves Hermann out of the way and walks around to get a better look. Raleigh bares his fangs at the man and snarls. “Hey, easy big guy, holy cow he’s huge! That’s one of the biggest wolf ferals I’ve ever seen!” Mako wants to punch him in the face. _Can’t he see he’s driving Raleigh crazy?_ The wolf is deliberately turned away from him, eyes closed but lips pulled back from the sharp yellow fangs. If Newt doesn’t stop, he’s going to get bitten. _Although knowing him he’d just get excited about the chance to record firsthand data about what feral shifting is like._

“Geiszler.” That’s all the Marshal has to say, and his tone of voice is enough to make Newt cringe back against the specimen tank. He doesn’t stop muttering, though.

“Hermann, that’s the only feral to ever Drift with a human! They have to let me talk to him. The ferals…”

“Newton, leave him alone.” Hermann forcibly pushes Newt out of the way. “He won’t want to talk about his brother.” Mako gives him a subtle nod. She appreciates his help with wrangling Newt. The biologist is a genius when it comes to Kaiju and ferals, but he has no idea how to interact with real human beings, no matter how much he claims Hermann is the one with the social awkwardness.

She’s glad to get out of the elevator. They’re on the main floor of the Shatterdome now, and Raleigh is looking around in a frenzy. He seems to be picking up energy from the air around him, thick as it is with diesel exhaust, arc welding smoke, and metallic fumes. He trots along at Mako’s heels, but he’s looking up at everything so much that he keeps colliding with things, He almost gets his tail run over by a supply trolley, and he jumps sideways and smashes into Mako’s legs. For all that he may not weigh much, it’s a sizeable impact, and Mako almost falls.

“This is all that’s left of the PPDC. We’re the resistance now, Mr. Becket.” It’s a little odd to hear _Sensei_ addressing the wolf this way. Usually when he talks directly to Herc or Chuck, they’re shifted into human form. Herc rarely shifts back to the dingo; Mako guesses there are too many bad memories. Raleigh seems to have the opposite idea. 

“Cherno Alpha. Last of the Mark I series, but she’s still a formidable fighting machine. Her pilots held the Vladivostok wall section for six years.” The Kaidanovskys, coming in in full gear, are surprisingly human. Mako was sure they were ferals of some sort, or at least Alexis, but she was quickly proven wrong.

“Crimson Typhoon. Only three-pilot rig, with the Wei triplets piloting. They’re masters of the Thundercloud formation.” Mako watches the boys playing basketball against the wall. Human too. She likes them, and they like her. She used to spar with them a lot, and she’s pretty sure they used to think her dragon mark was a tattoo because she was a Jaeger groupie. Even though she told them it wasn’t, she never told them the truth, and they probably still think she’s either too shy to admit she has a crush or that she can’t decide between the three of them.

“Striker Eureka. Only Mark V in existence. Pilots are Herc and Chuck Hansen. Both ferals.” They volunteered for it. Wanted to prove ferals could be as good as human pilots, or better, with their instincts. Mako knows how hard they had to fight, because of Knifehead. She hopes Raleigh doesn’t come to those conclusions.

The Hansens are some of Mako’s closest friends. Herc has been like an uncle to her, and Chuck…well, she and Chuck bonded over being weird things they couldn’t tell anyone else about. Chuck is the only person who was ever born feral (besides Mako but only five people in the whole world know that). He wasn’t bitten, even though everyone claims that’s the big scandal behind his uncle Scott’s expulsion from the PPDC and Chuck’s subsequent declarations of being a feral. Really, he’d been one the whole time, and Scott was kicked out for infecting a prostitute with the feral virus. Mako met Chuck a few years after she was adopted, when they were both still hiding. All they had to do was glance at one another and they knew each other’s secret. And just as quickly, they knew they’d never tell.

Even though Mako didn’t get to see him often until the last few months, Chuck was always her person to talk to about being something that didn’t even fit nicely in the box for things that didn’t fit in, and they shared dozens of video chats at odd hours halfway across the globe. Being born feral, Chuck can’t transmit the disease, according to Newt. The mutation in his body is stable, not virulent. There was an upheaval when he came out to the world as a born feral about whether someone who couldn’t spread the disease still had to be registered, especially since Chuck had never even shifted until then. In the end, the government suits won and Chuck is in the ferals registry. He made that sacrifice to become a pilot with his father because otherwise Herc would have been out, because by then the rules had been changed to exclude ferals from the Jaeger program altogether and Herc could never have had a human partner. Mako stopped calling Chuck much after that, because hearing him talk about piloting with his father made her feel guilty. _He was willing to out himself, to go on the registry, to be the hero he had to be. I’m too afraid to._

When she did see Chuck again, he was different. There was a harsh edge that replaced the puppyish playfulness, and he was more violent and explosive. Newt told Mako and _Sensei_ in private that it might be an unexpected side effect of being born feral. Chuck didn’t get stuck with something that wasn’t a natural part of him. He grew up half human, half wild animal. And for him, maybe the wild side is more integrated. More a part of who he is, not just an unwanted addition to an already complete personality. Ferals who are bitten generally want to control and suppress their wild side, seeing it as something not really them. Chuck is both human and feral, from birth. Newt says it might be a phase, that having tried the human side for so long he’s testing out the fully feral, and hopefully eventually he’ll find a balance. Everyone in the Shatterdome hopes it’s sooner rather than later, because Chuck is moody, picking fights, and he’s always biting people when he’s shifted, which is better than half the time. It’s a good thing he’s not contagious.

Right now, he’s human, taking apart some piece of greasy mechanical junk on top of a toolbox. Herc sits next to him but stands up fast when he sees the Marshal and Raleigh. “Becket?” Mako knows the two were part of a joint effort in Manila.

Raleigh’s ragged ears prick and he yelps. Herc is suddenly not there anymore, and a coppery flash of a dingo bolts across the hangar, barking and wagging its curved tail. Herc pulls up before he smashes into Raleigh, although Mako can see that he wanted to collide full on. But he knows if he does, Raleigh will just collapse and might not have the energy to get up again. Herc whines softly and sniffs at Raleigh’s scarred, bloodstained muzzle and the strip of raw skin around his neck where the collar was strapped on. Raleigh lowers his head and huffs quietly.

A deep snarl comes from behind Mako and she notices the slightly larger dog stalking out from behind the tool chest, tail wagging stiffly and low to the ground, fangs showing. Chuck is none too happy about another feral on his turf. Mako is allowed, but not this new one. She tries to get his attention, but he’s soley focused on Raleigh, advancing slowly. Raleigh looks up and meets Chuck’s stare, his own tail twitching. Mako can hear the almost silent vibrating growl. If someone doesn’t do something there is going to be a dogfight right here in the hangar bay. The Wei twins have stopped playing and their ball is bouncing away toward their Jaeger’s feet. The Kaidanovskys appear to be exchanging bets.

“Chuck.” Mako attempts to intervene more forcefully. Chuck likely won’t listen to anyone but a fellow feral in this state. Herc beats her to anything more aggressive. When Chuck takes another step, his father catches him by the neck and flips him on his back. Chuck struggles a little, but Herc pins him easily. Despite being a smaller feral, he has years more fighting experience, and Chuck compared to him is still a clumsy puppy. Mako stands between the two, breaking Raleigh and Chuck’s eye contact, and both ferals relax slightly.

“Let’s go.” _Sensei_ walks away, but Mako can feel Chuck’s eyes on the three of them. And she can hear his unspoken snarl. _Chose him over me, Mako? I thought you were on my side. Next time, stay out of my way._ She doesn’t want to think about what his “or else” might be. With his feral side so in control, he could do anything. Mako has never been scared of Chuck before, but now her hands are shaking. She grips the clipboard a little tighter as the hangar bay doors close behind them.


	4. Hong Kong Shatterdome-June 19

Mako isn’t prepared for how badly Raleigh reacts to the infirmary. He flat out refuses to go through the door, and he’s shaking and jumpy.

“They’re not going to hurt you.” Mako tries to reassure him, and then awareness hits. The last time he was in a Shatterdome infirmary, his brother had just died. The last time he was in a place like this, Raleigh left with a raw-edged, gaping hole in his mind and heart that no doctor could fix. No wonder he doesn’t want to go back in there. He has nothing but horrible memories. She recalls visiting him once, with _Sensei,_ and all she can see is how small Raleigh looked in that hospital bed, bandages covering his head and shoulder, and machines monitoring every spike in brain activity. He was in a coma for two weeks and everyone said it was a miracle he’d woken up. Mako thought then that he looked like he wished he hadn’t. Even when _Sensei_ tried to talk to him, Raleigh didn’t respond at first. He just stared at the wall, whispering Yancy’s name over and over, and the only time he acknowledged anyone else was there was when he yelled at _Sensei_ and called him a liar (and a lot of other words Mako tried to pretend she didn’t know) when _Sensei_ tried to tell him Yancy was gone.

She was scared then, scared he’d get angrier and attack them even though he was restrained and already, even then, had one of those collars to keep him from shifting. Now, looking back, all she feels is pity. Raleigh lost everything that February night. And then the PPDC took away what connection he had left to Yancy when they threw him out. _Everyone was afraid of him. They saw a dangerous animal that could snap at any moment, not a hurt, scared boy who lost the only family he had left in the world._ Instead of trying to help him, they cut their losses. So here they are now, with Raleigh half-dead from what the past five years have done to him and afraid to go back to the place that condemned him to that life.

“I don’t think we should try to take him in there.” She pulls _Sensei_ aside and explains, and he nods. He seems to have thought the same thing.

“We could have them come take a look at him out here.” Unfortunately the Marshal’s plan has no more success. Raleigh flinches away from the med tech who comes out in scrubs and gloves. He snaps at him and won’t let the man near him. Only after the tech backs through the infirmary doors again does Raleigh calm down.

There’s no way he’s going to let anyone from medical near him. “Maybe I could do this. If they’ll give me a kit.” Mako is no doctor, but she aced the required first aid and field medical exams at the Academy. _Sensei_ nods and goes into the infirmary, coming out a few minutes later with a white box. Mako doesn’t miss the small bottle he tucks into his pocket as well _. If he needed a refill again, it must be getting worse._ She knows he doesn’t want to worry her, but the stress as the kaiju attacks increase must be getting to him.

She takes Raleigh back down the hallway to crew quarters. They’re putting him in the room across from hers, and she takes the key from _Sensei_.

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

“I’ll be fine. Not like he can infect me if he decides to bite.” Med techs usually have to wear special gear when they work with ferals and even then it is a very risky job. She knows at least two who got bitten when they were trying to help feral pilots who were half out of their minds from Drift malfunctions. It's gotten to be a much less dangerous profession since a viral inhibitor was developed for medics and handlers two years ago, but people are still afraid to be bitten. Old prejudices and fears die hard. 

When they get inside she spreads the contents of the medical kit on the bunk and starts running warm water into the sink. Raleigh sits quietly next to her while she puts on a pair of gloves and finds a bottle of disinfectant, some antibiotic cream, and a roll of bandages. She’s used to patching up small scrapes; she used to do it all the time when they still lived at home, because Jake was the clumsiest kid she’d ever met. He perpetually had skinned knees, paper cuts, or black eyes. She knows how to deal with a stubborn boy who wants to act like everything’s fine, just in case Raleigh gives her that attitude.

He flinches away from her hands when she tries to clean the cuts. “Raleigh, please let me help,” she whispers. He’s so thin, and so filthy, and the scabs and scars on his back and chest and legs are in all stages of healing. Who could treat anyone so brutally, even a feral? How long has it been since anyone touched him with anything remotely like kindness? On the wall he was beaten, in the cages he fought. No wonder he doesn't want to let her in. “I promise, I’m not going to make it hurt more than it has to.” She can’t promise it won’t hurt. That regulation-issue disinfectant stings horribly.

Raleigh doesn’t seem to feel anything she does, just sits staring blankly at nothing while she washes out the gashes, some of them deep and festering enough to turn her stomach, and stiches the worst of them before moving on to his neck. The collar rubbed a raw stripe of skin all the way around his throat, and if it’s anything like Herc’s, he’ll always have the scar. Raleigh curls up in the corner when she’s done, head on his paws, watching her while she packs up the rest of the supplies into the med kit and sets it on a shelf, then takes down one of the two towels folded there and soaks it in the warm water in the sink.

She’d rather just wash his fur out in a shower, because this is going to leave the floor and her a soaked mess, but she can’t go into the men’s lockers and she can’t take Raleigh into the womens’. _If I don’t really think about what I’m doing, it’s going to be less awkward._ She and Jake used to wash their dog, Blue, indoors in winter like this because if they put him in the bathtub he’d flood the whole floor acting like an idiot. _You’re just washing up a dog, not a person. This isn’t embarrassing or intimate in the least. It’s not. Ferals don’t have the same hang-ups about modesty humans do. He’s not going to think anything of it._ She wonders if her face is turning red, and she’s glad she never Drifted with Becket because if he could see her thoughts right now...  
She tries to get it over as quickly as possible, but even so her face is scarlet, the floor is drenched, and so is she when Becket stands up and shakes spastically, water flying everywhere. _I’m going to need a shower after this._ He looks a little better without the mud and dried blood caked on his fur, but that’s only offset because wet, all his fur is clinging to his body and she realizes she can see every bone. She scrubs him as dry as she can with the other towel, since the room is chilly and she’d rather he didn’t have yet another reason to get sick.

“I’m going to go get you something to eat. I’ll be back, okay?” She throws one blanket on the bed and he curls up on it, letting her arrange the other one over top of him. She’s on her way to the mess hall, after changing into a jumpsuit that isn’t covered in mud and wolf hair, when she almost literally runs into Chuck Hansen.

“What was that in the hangar?” Mako can’t bring herself to ignore what happened, even though Chuck seems to be back to his normal relaxed self.

“Don’t do well with someone else on my territory. ‘Specially not a washed up has-been.” She can still hear a growl in Chuck’s tone.

“The Marshal thinks he’s the best chance we have of hitting the Breach with Gipsy.” She realizes it was the wrong thing to say seconds after it comes out of her mouth. Chuck prides himself and his father on being the best Jaeger pilots in the PPDC, and Striker Eureka is supposed to be the elite in combat tech.

She’s right. Chuck goes defensive, and she can see the feral side in his features. His smile hardens and his eyes hold hers in challenge, not friendship. “What is it with you and him? All of a sudden you’re defending him. Last I heard, he was holding your secret over your head.”

“Well, that was before Knifehead. Chuck, take a good look at him now. Do you really think he’s anything like he was?” There isn’t much of the cocky, self-assured ranger left, only a broken shell of what he used to be. She wonders what he’ll be like now, as a human. She remembers _Sensei_ complaining that the Beckets had too much talent and not enough humility. _I don’t think that’s a problem anymore._ Five years at the bottom of the food chain have taught Raleigh a lot of hard lessons, she’s sure.

“Do people change that much, Mako?”

 _You did._ She stops herself from saying it aloud, but that’s no use. She and Chuck simulation tested together. There was enough of a Drift that their thoughts aren’t truly their own. _Don’t think about earlier. Don’t._

“All I’m saying is, be careful. His last co-pilot got killed.”

“I’m not trying to be his co-pilot.” Even though she could, it would mean revealing she’s a feral too. And what if she really is just too strong for anyone else to take?

“Don’t. Stay away from him.” Chuck starts to walk away again, then turns back. “Mako, remember who you can trust. You don’t know him at all.”

_I don’t know you either anymore._


	5. Hong Kong Shatterdome-June 20

Mako wakes up to a horrible keening howl. For a moment she can’t tell whether it’s part of Onibaba’s roaring from her nightmare, or something outside her own dream, and she lies half awake and frozen, staring at the ceiling and willing her body to remember that she is twenty-two, not thirteen, that she is in Hong Kong, not Tokyo, and she is in a Shatterdome, not a burning city street.

Only once she’s convinced herself she is awake and this is reality, not hiding behind a dumpster with her hands over her ears, waiting for the moment the kaiju finds her, does she wonder what that sound was.

It’s only after checking off the kaiju alert, the screechy vent, and the water faucet as potential sources that she thinks of Raleigh. In the room across from her. Currently, as far as she knows, in wolf form still. He didn’t shift out the whole evening, not when she brought him food, or when she laid out clothes for him in the room, or when she left him to get some sleep. Last she saw he was curled up under the blanket on his bed, nose tucked under his tail.

She gets up and checks her watch. Three a.m. She throws a cardigan over the tank top she sleeps in and walks across the hall, putting her ear to the door. There’s been no repeat of the howling, but she can hear harsh, choked breathing, like someone’s crying. She’s not really willing to stand on ceremony, because that’s one of the symptoms of K-pneumonia toxicity as well. If Raleigh’s getting sicker he won’t be able to respond if she knocks. She unlocks the door and prays she’s caught this in time.

It’s a bit of a shock to find a human Raleigh huddled in the corner, sobbing into his hands. She had been prepared to deal with Blue toxicity. Emotions, not so much. Raleigh glances up at her, eyes red and glassy, while she stands in the doorway. She quickly shuts the door behind her and walks awkwardly across the room, sitting on the bed. She’s not sure whether he wants her to be any closer or not.

“Sorry I woke you up.” His voice is rougher than she remembers, probably a result of the three rounds of K-pneumonia. He sounds a bit like someone who’s smoked their whole lives.

“Nothing to be sorry for. Are you okay?” It’s a stupid question, but she doesn’t want to risk antagonizing him, risk bringing out the wolf. If he wants to be left alone, she’ll go.

“It got cold.” He tugs the blanket he’s got wrapped around him a little tighter and glances up at the heating vent. The temperature controls here seem to have two settings, boil you alive or turn you into an icicle, and they have a tendency to randomly stick one way or the other in the middle of the night. “I couldn’t stop dreaming about…about…” He stops and looks down at his scarred, calloused hands.

Mako doesn’t know if she should say something or not. She’s not good with things like this. Emotions are something she doesn’t really have much time for. No one has the luxury of getting upset when there are kaiju to kill. She learned that early. She’s good at talking herself out of her own emotions, but she has no clue how to help Raleigh. Maybe no one does.

“Do…do you want to talk…I’m sorry, I can go.” _Of course he doesn’t want to talk about it, idiot. He can’t even say Yancy’s name._

“No, please stay.” She sits down next to him and he reaches for her hand. “I-I don’t think being alone is good right now.” His fingers are icy in her own. The clothes she laid out for him are still on the shelf, and she tries not to think about that. _This was actually easier when he was a wolf._ She’s worked around ferals her whole life, at least her life after Onibaba, but their casual attitude toward shifting back and forth with complete disregard for modesty has never gotten any more normal. Especially since almost every feral she’s worked with is male.

“Come on, it’ll be warmer to sit on the bed than the floor,” she says. He stands up slowly, struggling with the blanket. Mako turns half away before she realizes he is dressed, just not in the clothes she left. He’s wearing the ragged, filthy pants and sweater she was given by the supervisor back at the Wall. _Why? Does he think he’s not supposed to wear the new clothes?_ She reaches up to help him with the blanket, since his left shoulder seems to be unable to move, and she notices, stitched in the collar of the sweater, the initials Y.B. Suddenly it makes sense. That’s Yancy’s sweater, probably the only thing of him Raleigh has left. 

When Raleigh sits down next to her, he curls into her like a large dog, as if he’s afraid if he isn’t as close to her as humanly possible, she’ll disappear. She runs her fingers almost thoughtlessly through his hair, which had been left to grow almost to his shoulders, messy and matted. She’ll have to cut it later. The touch seems to calm him slightly, and he’s stopped shaking so drastically, and the sobs have subsided into quiet whimpers.

It seems like forever that they sit there silently, Raleigh taking deep breaths and faintly shivering, Mako running her fingers through his hair, trying to work out some of the tangles. But Mako is comfortable in silence. Silence is a good thing. No alarms, no kaiju roaring, no screeching, tearing metal.

“You shouldn’t have brought me back.” Raleigh’s voice startles her. He’s still staring at his hands, rubbing a long, dark scar that cuts sharply across his left palm. “I’m just gonna screw everything up.”

“No. Raleigh, you were a good pilot.”

“Yancy was a good pilot. I was just the backup. I was supposed to be, and I let him die.” He looks away from her, rubbing his nose on the sleeve of the sweater, which was once the right size but now hangs off him like he’s a child playing with a parent’s clothing. Or an older sibling’s.

“You couldn’t control what that kaiju did. It could as easily have taken you as Yancy.” She doesn’t mean to sound clinical, but this is the only way she knows how to process things like this. _The claws could have gone through your bedroom ceiling instead of your parents’. It could have been you, but it wasn’t. And you’ll never know why…unless it’s because you still have something left you have to do._  
“I should have known. I should have felt that it wasn’t dead.” She knows how much ferals rely on their instincts in a fight, for everything from anticipating a kaiju’s next move to being sure the monster isn’t going to get up again once they’ve finished the job. Raleigh must believe he wasn’t paying enough attention. “I shouldn’t have let us walk away.” He swipes at his face again and whimpers, and the sound is heartbreaking, like an abandoned, wounded dog. “It was my j-job to m-make sure it w-was over and I-I messed up. I’m the r-reason he’s d-dead.”  
“Raleigh. It wasn’t your fault. It was an accident.” She holds him and lets him cry.

She’s not sure when she falls asleep. All she knows is, in the morning she wakes up, and she’s leaning against the wall with the worst kink in her neck she’s ever had, and a wolf is snoring peacefully in her lap, its paws tangled in the long sleeves of a worn out sweater.


	6. Hong Kong Shatterdome-June 20

Mako thought it would be easier to cut someone else’s hair than her own. It’s not. She’s already gotten the scissors stuck three times, each of which has gotten an annoyed yelp from Raleigh, and now that she’s done she’s pretty sure the two sides are uneven and there is a ridiculously stubborn cowlick in the back that refuses to stay down no matter what she tries.

“I think I’m going to quit before I make it worse.”

“That sounds really reassuring.” Raleigh raises an eyebrow at her. “Do I even want to see what this looks like?”

“Well, it looks better than it did. I think.” She’s beginning to think she ought to have had Sasha do this. The woman is a genius with scissors and hair; she’s the one who first cut Mako’s long dark ponytail into her now-signature bob when she decided she wanted to look more grown-up. But she isn’t sure who Raleigh will trust to get close to him with sharp things.

“As long as there aren’t still fleas, I’ll take my chances with your hack job.” She sweeps a handful of tangled hair off the chair into a trash bin, and Raleigh shakes his shoulders like a dog shaking off water, then hands her the towel she put over his sweater.

He looks better this morning than last night. He’s taken a shower and changed into the new clothes Mako left, and a good night’s sleep has gotten rid of most of the red-rimmed eyes from last night’s nightmares. Now that she’s cut his hair, Mako thinks he looks almost like his old self again, except that he’s thinner, and he doesn’t smile as easily, and there are new lines on his face.

“Food?” She asks, and he nods. They make their way silently through the halls, Raleigh trailing her like a puppy just trained to heel. Since last night, he’s tried to stay as close to her as possible, from tangling their hands together while he cried to falling asleep literally on top of her (and thank God he shifted back to a wolf then because how many ways can you say _awkward_?). She knows something about pack bonds, more specific to werewolves than any other shifters. Dingoes have it to an extent, and she’s seen it in the way Herc and Chuck twine their curled tails together when they’re both shifted and Chuck’s not running around like a hellion. But she’s never experienced it happening to her. Raleigh seems to have latched onto her, and _why not,_ her mind argues, _you gave him every reason to. You were kind; you acted like he was important for more than just his skills. You saw him at his most vulnerable, he trusts you and he let you in. You earned your way into his pack._ The problem is, she’s not sure that’s a safe place to be.

It’s not what Chuck said about Raleigh’s last Drift partner getting killed. _It’s not._ What she fears is caring about someone, anyone. Raleigh seems immune to the hardening. He’s lost so much and still he dives right back into this. He still craves affection and closeness, he’s still willing to throw everything of himself into someone, no matter what the risk. And he deserves better than a girl who’s walled herself off. A girl who told herself a long time ago that she wasn’t going to be hurt again, and the only way she could avoid it was not to care about anyone again. Ever.

She’s afraid. And she knows it. Everyone else is brave, but Mako is still a little girl cowering in an alley, clutching a shoe. Chuck risked his freedom, told the truth about himself, to get in a Jaeger with his father and save the world. Raleigh lost his brother, literally a half of himself in that torn Drift, and he’s still willing to risk being hurt all over again, just because he’s too loving a person.

Raleigh may have built walls around the coastline for a living, but she thinks he’s completely incapable of building a wall around his own heart. Mako doesn’t know if she envies him or not, because she wishes she were so honest, so open, but what good is it to love anyone or anything at the end of the world?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this one was short, but I felt like it ended itself and I didn't want to try to say more. I will hopefully have another chapter up by the end of the weekend.


	7. Hong Kong Shatterdome Mess Hall-June 20

Chuck and Raleigh aren’t any less antagonistic as humans than they were shifted. Mako is certain that the way Chuck slammed into Raleigh in the food line, which ended with half of Raleigh’s oatmeal and all of Chuck’s coffee spilled mostly on Raleigh but also on Mako’s arm (she’s currently scrubbing at it with a napkin she dipped in her glass of water) was no accident. Chuck’s glare and subsequent small smirk as he walked away made his apology and his explanation that he’d tripped over Max, the basically adopted second Hansen child and non-shifting Bulldog feral, ring hollow. Max was nothing if not cautious of human feet, after he got his paw broken as a puppy.

Mako doesn’t really know what the deal is with Max. He’s never shifted to human form the whole time he’s been at the Shatterdome. He formed an instant attachment to the Hansens when Herc found him outside the door one rainy night, and now he’s rarely too far from them unless he’s being spoiled rotten by Rosie the cook, with her soft spot for his so-ugly-it’s-cute little smushed face.

She finishes cleaning up her sleeve and turns to Raleigh, planning to help, then does a double take when she realizes he’s licking the spilled oatmeal off his sleeve. He catches her staring and stops with his arm halfway to his mouth, tongue still sticking out.

“Sorry. Old habit,” he mutters. “Wolf thing.” _Not totally._ He never used to do that before, Mako remembers, even though it is common for dog and cat ferals to lick their hands clean instead of washing up like normal human beings. _This is the habit of someone who can’t afford to waste a single mouthful of food._ The thought makes the food on her own tray suddenly feel like a betrayal. _We never starved, not even when rations were short. Either the Jaeger program was everyone’s focus, or now that they’ve shut us down we’re in a port city._

She sits down next to Raleigh and watches him practically inhale the new plate of food Herc gave him along with a muttered apology for Chuck’s rudeness. She’s heard people describe a fast eater as “wolfing it down”, and if Raleigh is any representative of his species, then the description is well-founded. He glances up at her a few times, and there’s a smear of butter on his nose that Mako goes to wipe away before pulling her hand back. That’s just a little too weird.

Chuck sits down, right across from Mako. He rubs his boot against hers, and she pulls away instead of kicking him back. He glances at her with a hurt expression before turning to Raleigh.

“So they tell me you’re the new pilot they got for Mako’s little restoration project.”

Raleigh turns to her. “You didn’t tell me you repaired Jaegers.”

“Only one. Actually, she’s yours. Gipsy Danger.” Mako isn’t sure if mentioning the Jaeger his brother died in is a great idea. She hadn’t wanted to show him yesterday, when he’d been half dead on his feet and Chuck had almost started a fight. After last night, she doesn’t even know if the best place for him is back in a Jaeger. He’s dragging around so much guilt over what happened to Yancy. Maybe she should have left everything that could have reminded him of that night rusting in a scrapyard. But back then, when she picked Gipsy to repair, she hadn’t really thought about Raleigh ever coming back.

“They didn’t scrap her?” She can’t tell whether that’s a haunted fear in his eyes, or an almost lost hopefulness.

“They did. But when we were low on funding, it was cheaper to repair than replace the Jaegers, and she wasn’t in the worst shape, so…” Mako trails off. _God I screwed up. It sounds like saving her was an afterthought, like she was us making the best of a bad situation. Like going for him only because all the other Mark III pilots are dead._ She didn’t tell Raleigh that either; she was going to but after seeing him in that cage, just another tool to be used up and worn out by the horribly pragmatic Wall contractors, she wants Raleigh to think he means something more than just a necessary piece of the tech. _He may be the last person who knows how to run those Jaegers, but that’s not the only reason he’s worth anything to us. And if he thinks it is, then we’re no better than the people who collared him and caged him._ Mako hasn’t really thought this through to the extent she is now, and the thought makes her physically sick. _I was so angry when I saw him in a cage, but up till then, he wasn’t really a person to me either. He was just a pilot we needed for our plans._ Everyone has used Raleigh for their own ends and thrown him away if he’s not useful anymore.

“She was supposed to be Mako’s, but then the Marshall shot that idea down.” Chuck spears a potato with his fork, staring at Raleigh. “He thought some washed-up feral was a better option than a girl with 51 sim kills to her name. What makes you so special, huh?” His fangs are showing. Herc reaches for him, but Raleigh holds the older man’s hand back. He’s meeting Chuck’s gaze firmly.

“Maybe it’s that this could be a suicide run, and she’s got a hell of a lot more to live for than a ‘washed up feral’.” Mako can hear a shudder in his voice. He already doubts himself, and Chuck is only making it worse.

“Where have you even been for the last five years? Building that fucking useless wall, rolling over and being a good little lapdog for those…” He doesn’t get any farther. Mako reaches across the table, regulations be damned, and decks him.

“Chuck. Apologize to him NOW.” She can feel the heat in her hands and tries to breathe. If she starts a fire here someone will notice. Chuck is sprawled on the floor, gaping. Mako dimly realizes, through a red haze of anger, that everyone is watching. Chuck seems to as well, because he scrambles to his feet, brushing himself off and glaring at everyone.

“Not apologizing for the truth. Listen, werewolf, maybe somehow they find you a co-pilot and send you out there with us. But this is my mission, and if you start screwing up again, I’m gonna drop you like a sack of Kaiju shit, got it?” He turns and walks away as impressively as he can when half a glass of milk is spilled on the front of his shirt.

“Mako, you didn’t have to do that.” Raleigh’s staring at her in a mix of admiration and apology. “It’s nothing I haven’t heard before.”

“He’s a feral too. He should know better.” Mako shakes her stinging hand and sits down again.

“Sorry. Again.” Herc mutters. “Raised him myself, and sometimes I think he runs a little too wild. Needs a good bitten ear to take him down a peg.” But Herc can’t afford a fight with Chuck right now. Not when they need every Jaeger team in peak physical condition. And Mako has seen the level of damage feral fights leave.

“Chuck is a butt-licking idiot.” Mako can’t help but turn to the typical feral insult. Chuck deserves it. _He knew what he was doing calling Raleigh a lapdog._ That’s more than a turn of phrase for a submissive, obedient feral. It’s become synonymous with a feral who’s selling themselves in the sex industry, voluntarily or not. Mako doesn’t know what happened to Raleigh over the last five years, and if that was part of it, she doesn’t want to know. But if it was, either it was Raleigh’s choice or he was forced into it, and either way he doesn’t deserved to be shamed for doing what he had to do to survive.  

“So you put Gipsy back together?” Raleigh’s trying desperately to change the subject. He shovels in the last few mouthfuls of his food and stands. “Can I see her?” Mako’s barely half-finished with her meal, but she’s as ready to leave as Raleigh.

“Yes. Let’s go.”


	8. Jaeger Bay 03-June 20

Mako sits on the edge of the platform, watching techs welding Gispy’s last few sheeting replacements. Beside her, Raleigh is quiet, staring.

“She looks beautiful,” he finally whispers. “Like new.” His hand moves across the diamond-plate flooring until it finds Mako’s, and his fingers twist into hers again. She doesn’t pull away, even though she suddenly remembers that day years ago, on the girders, when he told her he knew her secret. This isn’t the same Raleigh. And she isn’t the same Mako.

“I’ve made some modifications. Double nuclear core, non-alloy sheeting…”

“Learned from the way Kaiju Blue was melting the Mark IV’s alloy plating. And she’s got extra torque per muscle strand now too.” Tendo Choi has come up behind them. Raleigh stands up fast, and the next second he’s wrapped the smaller man in a massive hug. “Good to have you back, Becket Boy,” Tendo mumbles, a bit muffled.

“I didn’t know you were still here.”

“Where else am I going to have my coffee habit so well supported?” Tendo chuckles. “They told me they were bringing you back, but I was trying to wheedle some extra bearings and couplings out of a scrapper contact down in the Boneslum, so I didn’t get back till late.” He hands Mako a paper bag. “Think these are what you were missing in the pilot rig. He swore up and down they were from a Mark III.”

Mako inspects the connections, specially fitted hinged pieces that allow the pilot rig to move and absorb impact. The ones on Gipsy’s left side were still usable, but the whole right rig was destroyed. She says nothing and slips the bag into her knapsack, along with her clipboard.

“I hear you’re going back in her.” Tendo has a hand on Raleigh’s arm, looking at him sadly. “Are you sure about this?”

“Don’t have much choice. If they came and took me off the wall, they must be pretty desperate.” Mako hears what he’s not saying. _If they’re asking a pilot who got his brother killed to come help them, they have no other options._

“I think they might have a problem finding a co-pilot. You know they stopped pairing ferals and humans after…after Anchorage.”

“So I heard.” Raleigh glances at Mako. “You said something about candidate trials?”

“Yes. There are a few ferals who were never assigned to Jaegers after training at the Academy after the laws changed, and ended up in other parts of the PPDC. Most of them followed us here to Hong Kong. They’re trained, just might be a little rusty.”

“Can’t be worse than me.” Raleigh rubs his left shoulder. “You know medical’s probably going to ground me, right?”

“We didn’t know…we weren’t aware of how bad the damage was until we found you.” Mako doesn’t want to admit the truth. That this is a plan almost certain to fail. With more holes in it than Valkyrie Blade’s ConnPod after the Jaeger was sprayed with Kaiju Blue from its last kill. “We don’t have much choice. We have one chance left at stopping the Kaiju.”

“This attack on the Breach Chuck was talking about.” Raleigh watches her closely, and she looks away. “You know the Jaegers going aren’t gonna come back.” _Which is why Raleigh’s still a potential pilot. If he doesn’t come back, would he even care?_

“Speaking of medical, we never got you to them yesterday.” Mako stands. “Are you game for it?”

“Sure.” Raleigh shrugs. “What’s the worst they’re gonna tell me? Skipping most of my PT and spending five years climbing walls wrecked my shoulder? That I’m probably going to die at fifty because my lungs are shot? Are they really going to tell me I can’t pilot a Jaeger that’s already been written off as a casualty?”

Mako flinches a little at the bitterness. _Yes, we should have told him everything when we came for him._ She’d forgotten, in the horror of seeing what had happened to Raleigh. _But really, we just came to ask him to die here._ She doesn’t know which is worse, a long slow agonizing life at the Wall or a quick death in a Jaeger. Probably the first. But she still feels guilty. And more than a little hesitant. This was easy when Raleigh was a dossier file and a memory of fear and anxiety. But truthfully she’d almost forgotten why he was here last night. She hadn’t patched up his injuries and comforted him in the dark because he was the pilot they were sending off to die. She’d done it because Raleigh’s life had become a living hell and she just wanted him to finally not be alone. _I can’t believe that it’s a good thing for us to pull him out of that only to send him off to die._

“Becket boy, you’ve always been stubborn. If they tell you no, I’m pretty sure you’ll find a way around them if you really want to pilot her again. Just like you and Yance did when they told you a feral and a human couldn’t Drift.”

“And look how well that went.” Raleigh glances past Tendo, at nothing.

“Stop blaming yourself for that. I was there. I watched the Kaiju signature go black. That thing should have been dead. There was no way you could have known it was coming back.” Tendo’s argument sounds carefully rehearsed. Mako wonders how many times he’s imagined how he was going to deal with that when, or if, Raleigh ever came back.

Raleigh says nothing, but he starts to walk away. Mako follows helplessly, glancing at Tendo with an understanding nod. _He won’t listen to anyone who tells him that. He wants to blame himself because it’s easier than not blaming anyone at all._

Shockingly, medical gives them a clearing, although Mako thinks the doctor may have fudged more than a few numbers. She was watching the pulse-ox meter on Raleigh’s finger and she’s sure it never got above 85. Pilots are supposed to have at least 98.

What doesn’t go so well are the candidate trials. Mako is beginning to think she underestimated Raleigh’s skills. She was sure his performance would have deteriorated fairly extensively after five years out of the program, but if anything he’s more dangerous. He gets winded and exhausted easily; candidate trials are taking over an hour longer than she expected because he needs to take several minutes to rest and recover after each one, but to compensate for that he handles the matches faster and harder. The problem is, this doesn’t feel like a dialogue, the way it’s supposed to be. It doesn’t feel like Raleigh is feeling out the ways the candidate’s style is complementary to his own skills. It feels like he’s searching for their weakness and exploiting it to get this over fast. He acts like it’s a real fight.

Mako can tell _Sensei_ is as frustrated by this development as she is. He’s watched the whole trial, and as Raleigh pins the last candidate to the mat for the fourth time, he sighs.

“Get me some results by tonight, Miss Mori. We need to put them in simulations as quickly as we can.” Mako nods. They have no real alternatives. They can’t put two new pilots in at the same time, and Raleigh is the only one left with experience. Besides _Sensei._ But the med tech told him he’d probably be dead before he even made it to the Breach if he tried to pilot for this run.

She sits in her room and watches tapes of the fights, trying to piece together which of those ferals might possibly be able to pilot with Raleigh. She finds herself getting more caught up in the matches themselves though; it’s not like other compatibility trials she’s seen. Raleigh is skilled, but there’s also something raw there, something she recognizes from the nights she trained so hard the staff in her hands scorched. When one of the candidates lands a solid hit, knocking Raleigh on his back, she stops the playback because she could see something in Raleigh’s eyes when he scrambled to his feet. Fear.

Raleigh won’t let this be a fair fight because he’s learned he can’t afford to lose. He needs someone in there he can trust, someone he knows won’t hurt him. And there’s only one way Mako knows how to fix this now.


	9. Hong Kong Shatterdome-June 20-21

“No.”

“But two ferals should be able to Drift.” Mako swallows down the hard pain of fear in her throat. _Did I really just say this? Am I doing this?_

 _Sensei_ rests his head in his hands, rubbing his forehead before looking up at her. It’s eleven p.m. and she knows he’s exhausted. He gets tired easily these days, even if she and Herc are the only ones allowed to see it. “No one knows you are one, Mako. Do you want them to know?”

“What will it matter if we lose the war? If the Kaiju don’t stop, whether I’m feral or not won’t be a problem. I’ll be as dead as everyone else.” She sets the stack of candidate files on his desk. Her own file is topmost. “You told me to get the results to you tonight. This is my choice.”

“You don’t even know if you two are compatible.”

“We’ll test tonight. No one has to know but us. If it fails, I’ll choose one of the others. But we need a chance.” If he says no again, she will back down. She trusts his decision making. But part of the reason she’d not in the candidate pool is her own fear and lies. She can’t expect _Sensei_ to keep making exceptions for her. If it’s her fate or the fate of the world in the balance, she knows which one needs to be chosen. _Sensei_ would choose to sacrifice himself. He would have if he hadn’t been too weak to even pilot a Jaeger to the Breach. How can she ask him to keep hiding her?

“Go get Becket. I’ll make sure no one else is in the training rooms.” _Sensei_ nods to her. She sets down the files with shaking hands. She thought it would feel good, to finally get what she’s dreamed of for years. But it just feels like she’s standing on the edge of the Breach, about to topple in. If this works, she’s going to have to reveal her true identity to the world. And there will be no going back.

She has to force herself to knock on Raleigh’s door. _At least if this works, maybe I won’t feel guilty about bringing him here to die. I’ll be right there with him._ For as much as she hated herself earlier, she wonders if maybe Raleigh doesn’t care because he’s a lot like her. He can’t imagine a future without the war, without the Jaegers. Maybe the best thing for both of them is to die trying to make things right. _Or that’s just what I tell myself so I can sleep at night._

Raleigh answers the door, shirt half on, hair frowzy from sleep. Or maybe trying to get to sleep, because he seems too awake for it being now past midnight. “Mako, what’s going on?” He struggles to get his left arm through the shirt sleeve and Mako follows the long brown Drivesuit scars, like the ones _Sensei_ has, across that shoulder and down his side. But those aren’t the only scars he has, not by a long shot. There are claw and fang marks ripping across his side, leaving raised ridges down his arm. Tiny flecks from welding sparks dot his hands and wrists. And underneath his wrists, down the inside of his arm, she sees the white lines she knows too well.

“One more candidate test.”

“I thought you’d scraped the bottom of the barrel for anyone else.”

“Well, we had someone who wasn’t really on our radar.” Now that it’s come right down to it she doesn’t want to say it’s her. That makes it real. That means she really might be suiting up to co-pilot with Becket tomorrow. And as much as getting in a Jaeger has always been her dream, she’s not sure anymore. It was a nice thing to think about in hypothetical. Reality is guaranteed to be nothing like her imagination.

“So you’re running a random test in the middle of the night? Couldn’t wait until morning?”

“Not if we want to give the techs time to get the suits and neural relays specifically calibrated. We’re hoping to test Drift tomorrow afternoon.” The older Jaegers aren’t optimized for their specific pilot, but the new ones have test thresholds and can be adjusted to make co-piloting with a person very different from you a little smoother. Mako also knows they’ll need time to change her suit rig and programming from sim to full combat. If she turns out to be compatible.

Raleigh follows her to the Kwoon. The only other person there is _Sensei._

“Wait, the Marshal?” Raleigh’s confusion is almost laughable.

“No.” Mako kicks off her boots, hands her clipboard to _Sensei_. “Me.” Raleigh doesn’t look any less stunned.

“How…”  
“Didn’t you hear Chuck at breakfast? 51 drops, 51 kills in sim. And Gipsy was supposed to be mine anyway.” She shrugs, picks up a bo.

“Are you sure?” Raleigh knows what she’s risking if they are compatible. But he’s not going to tell her no.

“I know what I’m doing.”

His first strike is a surprise. She’s not used to training against someone so determined to get things over with fast; and the sheer desperation in the way he attacks startles her. She shakes off the thoughts and comes back with her own variation, letting herself tap into the primal fire inside, from the nights she trained until she couldn’t stand, trying to control the dragon.

“Miss Mori. More control,” _Sensei_ calls, and she realizes the staff in her hands is smoldering under her fingers. It’s so easy here to let the dragon out. She doesn’t feel like she has to hide, not here, not with Raleigh.

The next time Raleigh gets in a hit, he’s had to work for it. She’s watched him fight, and even though she made one mistake, she learns fast. It’s different being the person in the test than the person watching, but she’s always been good at picking up on people’s tactics and matching them. And after that first desperate strike, Raleigh seems to have relaxed a bit. He’s moving more loosely than he was in the other trials, not constantly trying to keep up a guard. He’s more offensive than defensive now, and he seems more interested in figuring out her fighting style than beating her. That’s a good sign.

He lands another strike when she’s distracted, and when he pulls back she can see an almost puppy-like playfulness and half a smirk, amused that he caught her unprepared. _Let’s see how you like it turned on you._ She doesn’t feel much concern anymore that if she attacks hard she’ll send him into a defensive panic. He knows this is only a test. He trusts her not to hurt him.

She gets in two more strikes, and by then she and Raleigh are both panting, sweating, half-ready to quit. But they need one more hit to finish the trial. The last bits of Raleigh’s nervous defensiveness are gone now. He’s relaxed, smiling a little, clearly impressed with her skill. She forgot they were trying to decide if she was good enough to go fight and die alongside him. She’s just enjoying matching her skill with someone with whom, for once, she doesn’t have to hold back anything.

She needs to know Raleigh really does trust her, that no matter what she won’t hurt him. This time, she goes low, appears to be falling, before she catches Raleigh’s leg and flips him on his back. For a split second his eyes are full of the same panic as in the first fights. Any feral is most vulnerable on its back, and if this were a real fight, he’d be dead.

Just as quickly, she watches the fear replaced by respect. Raleigh gives her a small nod, and it’s as much an affirmation of her skill as it is an understanding that she was proving she was trustworthy. He reaches for her hand to help him back to his feet, then suddenly flips her and pins her down the same way she did to him. For a second, she too feels that blind, trapped-animal panic, but then it fades and she’s looking up at Raleigh, and he’s smiling, and she kicks off the mat and knocks him back and she’s about to go for another move that guaranteed to take him down when she hears _Sensei_ clear his throat.

“I’ve seen enough. Miss Mori, you will report to Bay 3 at 0700 tomorrow morning.” She forgot he was there. She forgot there was anyone left in the whole world but Raleigh. They’re compatible.

Raleigh is still watching her, shifting from foot to foot on the mat, whole body tense and eager like a dog waiting for its owner to throw a ball. Mako’s blood is burning with the same playful eagerness. She wants to get back in there, give as good as she got, and scuffle until they’re both too tired to do anything more than lay on the mat and laugh at each other. But she has to be suiting up at 0700 tomorrow.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” she tells Raleigh when they move away from each other in the hallway to their own rooms. They didn’t leave each other’s side the whole way back from the Kwoon (which caused a minor disaster when they tried to go through a door at the same time and got awkwardly stuck), and Mako can feel a soft hum of connection between them. Now that pack bond is going both ways.


	10. Gipsy Danger-June 21

Mako spends the hours between 0500 and 0700 working out almost frantically. She can’t sleep and as much as she imagines it in her head, she’s not ready to tell the whole Shatterdome she’s a feral. Once she says this, there is no taking it back.

She’s still shaking when she walks into the Jaeger bay at 0645. The techs are still running diagnostics on her suit, and _Sensei_ is watching them. When he sees her, he smiles. Mako forces a smile in return. It takes almost ten minutes longer to suit up than normal because she’s too tense, and the calibrations can’t be done with her heart rate so high. Finally, she’s rigged up and ready.

It’s when she walks out into the hangar and sees almost every resident of the Shatterdome there that she panics. _I’m going to fall._ Her legs are shaking and she can hear her heart monitor signaling that she’s in a red zone.

Still, she’s bracing herself, clenching fists, trying to draw strength from the dragon inside her so she can once and for all say the three words that are going to change her life forever. Then Chuck has to go ruin it.

“Mako, what the hell are you doing?” He’s forcing his way through the people in the hangar bay. “I told you to stay away, and you go and choose yourself as that feral’s co-pilot?” Mako is ready to knock him down again, but _Sensei_ holds her back _._ They can’t afford for her to make a scene right now.

“Desperate times call for desperate measures. We don’t have any other pilots as qualified.” _Sensei_ puts a hand on Mako’s arm; he’s speaking loud enough for everyone in the room to hear. “She’s decided to take the risk of Drifting with a feral. She knows what she’s doing.” Mako knows they won’t question this. Everyone knows she’s the girl with the death wish because she’s out for vengeance. Taking a risky Drift with Becket so she has the chance to fight a kaiju makes sense. No one has to know she’s not the one risking her sanity. She’s grateful to _Sensei_ for continuing to protect her. She wonders how long he’s planned for something like this, how many different scenarios he can cover up for her for.

Chuck still looks ready to kill someone, especially when Raleigh walks in in his own Drivesuit, but he backs off when Herc forces him to. He’s growling, and Mako doesn’t like the animalistic rage in his eyes. This isn’t the Chuck she remembers, not at all. She doesn’t know where he’s gone, but this new Chuck is possessive and territorial and vindictive.

She tries to push it out of her mind because it’s not fair to take her anger into the Drift when she’s sure Raleigh isn’t all that fond of Chuck either. She doesn’t need to make him feel worse. He gives her a small smile when they both climb into the ConnPod.

“Ranger looks good on you,” he says quietly. She grins.

“You too.” He looks less lost in here, less trapped in a world he doesn’t fit into. In here, it doesn’t matter if he’s feral or not, not anymore. All that matters are him and her and can they fight together. He’s still not in optimal shape, and she could hear her techs discussing the heavy alterations they had to do to his suit both in actual form and programming, to compensate for the fact that he’s below a healthy weight and also the below-regulation blood oxygen levels and necessarily shorter endurance time, as well as neural scarring from his hours-long solo drift in Gipsy last time. Which means Mako might be taking a bit more of the weight of the Drift. She doesn’t care.

“Ready to get inside my head?”

“Yes. You?” He doesn’t know the extent of what’s in there, but then again neither does she. So maybe it’ll be easier to avoid those R.A.B.I.T.s.

They lock into their piloting rigs, Raleigh on the right side now even though he’s categorized as a left hand pilot. His left arm is too neutrally damaged for him to continue using it in an actual fight. The techs connect them to the Drift systems, then back away, leaving Mako and Raleigh alone in their own world inside their heads. “Calibrating.” She can hear Tendo’s calming voice through her headset. “Left hemisphere calibrated.” He pauses. “Right hemisphere calibrated. Engaging Neural Handshake in 3…2…1…” There’s a faint crackling buzz and then Mako’s vision goes blue. She can see herself, watching her father’s hands beat a glowing sword blade into shape. Raleigh, wrestling with his brother in the snow. Herself, pulling a rake through stones, creating swirling patterns that from above are now recognizable as a coiled dragon. Raleigh, sitting in a hospital chair, arm wrapped in gauze, listening to doctors argue while Yancy tries to…Yancy…

_“Raleigh, listen to me!” The kaiju roars, metal shrieks and rends, and then Raleigh is screaming…Yancy is screaming…Mako is screaming…she doesn’t know who she is anymore, only that this is unbearable._

The pain is overwhelming. Mako feels like someone is gutting her like a fish in the market. There is nothing but cold and pain and helpless rage and loss. She gasps and reaches out for Raleigh through the Drift. It feels like that night he dreamed of Yancy, because she’s reaching out but he’s huddled away in a corner of his own mind, in too much pain to fight back against the memories. They’re going to go out of alignment. They could be trapped in the R.A.B.I.T. forever.

_“No one wants this one.”_

_“He’s good enough for the Wall.”_

“Raleigh, please, you have to fight it. It’s not real.”

 _“We’ve got a special treat for you tonight, boys. This one’s going to be a fighter to watch.” Mako is almost blinded by the sudden glare of light through the mesh of her cage. She’s surrounded by yelling men in scuffed boots and canvas jackets, men laughing brutally, handing each other money, tipping back beers and then tossing the bottles at the cage. The room smells so strongly her wolf…_ Wait, Mako isn’t a wolf. That’s Raleigh. She’s in his head… _wolf senses are overwhelmed. Sweat and beer and smoke and blood and other wolves and dogs and cats._

 _“Used to be a PPDC Ranger. Got five kills in a Jaeger under his belt, and the last one he did alone. This one’s gonna be hard to beat…if he’s still got any fight left in him.” Someone prods her with something sharp, and Mako…_ Raleigh… _snarls._

She tries to break free, pull them both out of the memory, but all she succeeds in doing is pulling herself out of the wolf and into her own body, standing next to Raleigh, watching helplessly.

 _The cage door opens and the wolf bolts into a bigger cage, still surrounded by voices and laughs and crashes. There’s blood on the floor. The yelling reaches a fever pitch, and then a door in front of her opens and a huge mastiff leaps out, saliva and blood dripping from its teeth and a bloodlust in its eyes that’s almost more horrible than what’s in a kaiju’s._ Mako flinches and loses the grip on reality she had, and she’s back in the wolf.

 _She doesn’t want to fight. She has enough blood on her hands. No more killing. No more people dead because of me. She tries to dodge and the mastiff’s fangs rake her bad shoulder._ No. She doesn’t have Drivesuit scars. Raleigh does. She’s outside again, watching the fight from inside the cage but unable to do a thing to stop it.

 _The mastiff knocks Raleigh down and goes for his throat. He rolls enough to avoid it but the other dog sinks its teeth into his left foreleg and there’s a sickening snap. Raleigh howls, a keening cry of pain and fear, and the mastiff backs off, fangs bloodied. Raleigh stumbles to his feet, left paw held above the ground, back against the wall of the cage. The mastiff roars and lunges, and it’s not a dog anymore, it’s Knifehead, and Raleigh is alone and hurting and angry, and he has to fight back or they’re going to die._ And Mako is dragged down into the whirlpool of memories again.

 _She has to fight, or she will die. She bares her…_ Raleigh’s _…fangs, and lunges, and her teeth are sinking into the mastiff’s neck…_

_And Onibaba roars, and she roars back, a little girl in a city street with a dragon pin burning on her coat. She roars, and she’s flying, a creature as blue as her coat, claws scarlet as her shoes. She’s going to destroy the monster who took her family._

This isn’t supposed to happen. R.A.B.I.T.s are memories. But Mako has never, ever become a dragon. She has to get out of this. She knows how to fight a R.A.B.I.T. but not this…She tries to run, but the little girl is gone, and instead the dragon swoops clumsly sideways, wings shredding through the top level of an office building. She can feel the slash of glass on her flank and through the tender skin on her wing, the itchy crush of broken concrete under her belly.

She’s never felt it like this. The circuitry in her Drivesuit is overheating; she can feel the metal scorching against her skin.

“Mako! Mako, shut it down!” She can hear Tendo in her headset but she doesn’t know how to stop. And how does he know…She can feel it. She’s supercharging Gipsy’s core as her own body overheats. The jaeger is responding to her in a way it never should. If she doesn’t stop now, the double nuclear core she just installed is going to blow containment and they’re going to explode.

She reaches out for Raleigh. _We both have to get out, okay?_ He’s there, and when she reaches out he reaches for her too. The Drift meets, stabilizes. Mako can feel her body falling back in tune with his. Together, their breathing steadies, and the memories fade into a low blue and crimson and silver hum of thoughts at the back of their minds. Then the Drift disengages altogether and Mako almost collapses out of her rig.

“Get them out of there!” She can hear _Sensei’s_ voice, worried and angry. She reaches for Raleigh, who is sagging limply, unable to even lift his head. “Raleigh? Raleigh!” She reaches for him but moving her arm is too much effort and the world shakes and goes black.


	11. Shatterdome Infirmary-Date Unknown

When Mako wakes up, she’s alone. _Where’s Raleigh?_ She tries to sit up and a medic pushes her back gently. She realizes, dimly, that she’s in an infirmary bed.

“Is Raleigh…is he okay?’ He should be right there next to her. Medics don’t separate co-pilots unless something is very, very wrong.

“He was more out of alignment than you, so he’s had more mental issues. Also, he was pretty badly burned by his own Drivesuit when the Jaeger started supercharging.” Mako flinches guiltily. That’s her fault.

She has no burn marks from the overheated circuitry, although the medical tech who helped her get out of her suit can’t understand why. The metal was so hot the tech burnt her own hands getting the suit off Mako. She even showed her the marks. She can’t believe Mako has none. Still, the burn of dragon fire runs under her skin, under those lines, and she can feel it.

“I need to see him.”

“You can’t.”

“What?” Mako scrambles out of bed, tangling her legs in the sheets. “I have to. He’s my co-pilot.”

“Not anymore.” The medic states it flatly. “He’s going back to his contract owners now. Since he doesn’t technically belong to the PPDC anymore, you need to leave him be.”

“What?” Mako is ready to fight her way through anyone who’s going to stop her from getting to Raleigh. She can feel the faint Ghost Drift, much weaker than it should be because they’ve only been under one time and it went so wrong. But still, they’re connected. And she can feel fear and pain.

The door opens and _Sensei_ walks in. “Mako. Thank God. They told me you woke up.”

“What have you done to Raleigh?” Mako turns her anger on the person most likely responsible for it. She knows how protective _Sensei_ is. Maybe he thinks it’s Raleigh’s fault Mako was in a coma for…how long? She doesn’t know, doesn’t care. “Why are you sending him back? He didn’t hurt me. That was all my fault, not his!”  
 _Sensei_ puts his hands on her shoulder. She can feel the roughness, the steadying warmth, through the thin hospital gown. “I’m sorry, Mako. But it wasn’t my decision to make. The UN has us on a short leash now, since we’re not technically funded anymore, and after what happened with Gipsy…”  
“That was my fault! He didn’t do anything!”  
“That’s not how everyone else sees it.” She wants to scream, _look, how have you people not seen it? I’m feral too!_ But the words stick in her throat. Raleigh didn’t want anyone to know. He’s taking the fall for her so she stays safe. Again, taking the blame for someone, because he feels like he’s not worth someone risking everything for.  
“You have to do something. You have to stop them.”  
“I can’t.” He sighs, rests his head against the wall.  
“But we bought him! He’s ours!” As much as Mako hates this system, she knows its rules. Raleigh should be theirs to do whatever they want with.  
 _Sensei_ sits down slowly in one of the chairs along the wall. Mako joins him. It feels wrong to stand when he needs to sit. “We didn’t have the money to buy him, Mako. I had to pull a lot of strings just to get him loaned to us.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“We had enough problems. I thought this wouldn’t be one of them. And you didn’t need to worry.” _If I really wanted to know, I should have read the contract like I was supposed to._ She looks down at her hands, feeling the fire in them, then up at the Marshal’s face. He suddenly looks so old, so beaten down by life. He tries to hold everything together the best he can. She can’t blame him too harshly for trying to spare her the stresses tearing him apart.

“Can I at least see him? They won’t let me. But he shouldn’t be alone after a Drift like that.” _I shouldn’t be alone either._

“We’ll see.” _Sensei_ stands up, calls one of the medics over. “She’s going to need to be around him for a while, otherwise the Drift hangover is going to hold on maybe for weeks. Let them get some closure.” The medic nods, and leads Mako away to another room, where Raleigh is lying still and pale, aside from the red burn lines, in a bed, alone. There’s a strange mix of smells, antiseptic and scorched skin, but Mako breathes deeply through her mouth a few times and the urge to throw up fades.

Mako kneels next to the bed and reaches for his hand. “Raleigh, I’m here now.” He blinks sleepily at her, probably still half-dazed from the broken Drift. “It’s going to be okay.” The words ring hollow and burn like poison in her throat. _Nothing is going to be okay when you still belong to those monsters._ She forgot about the Ghost Drift, and she can feel Raleigh tense.

“Mako, what happened?”

“Our Drift had to be shut down. Both of us went under pretty badly. And…and they split us up because…Raleigh, I don’t know how to say this…they’re not going to let you stay.”

He sighs, sounding resigned. “It’s fair. I really screwed this up.”

“It was both of our faults, Raleigh. It’s not worth them sending you back to Alaska.” She knows better than to tell him none of it was on him. He’ll just argue harder if she does.

“What’s the use of getting mad about it?” He holds her hand a little tighter, and even though it sounds like he’s trying to make light of it, trying not to make her feel bad, trying to seem like he doesn’t care, he’s starting to cry.

“It’s not fair. We’re compatible. They just need to give us another chance.” Mako knows she sounds like a petty child but this is not petty. This is Raleigh’s _life._ And just because he’s listed a feral, he can be ripped away from them and there’s nothing she can do. She hates this system, and she’s lost for a moment in the desire to burn it to the ground. But Raleigh’s hand is in hers, keeping her anchored.

“Mako, it’s going to be okay.” He rubs one scarred, calloused thumb over the back of her hand. She feels her own tears dripping down onto their intertwined fingers. She wants to believe him. But how can she when she’s seen what they did to him there? How can anything be okay again when you find the missing piece of your heart only to have it ripped away from you? She thought she’d never understand how Raleigh felt when Yancy died, but that’s not true anymore.

The door slams open harshly, and Mako jumps. A hard-looking man is standing there, work boots leaving a trail of rain-soaked mud on the floor. _Sensei_ stands behind him, looking powerlessly furious. Under the new administration, the Wall contractors technically have more power than the Marshal of a program that’s been legally disbanded.

“Wrap it up. We’d like to get him on a flight out of here before night.” The man’s voice is too loud for the confined space. Raleigh flinches, then shifts, more out of a desperate need to protect himself than anything else, Mako thinks. In wolf form, he at least has claws and teeth to defend himself.

“You people are letting an uncollared feral roam around here?” The man sounds insulted. “You’re not supposed to remove that. Ever. He’s still under contract.” When neither of them say anything, he grumbles, “You’ll be paying to replace that. Oughta make you pay damages too. Take the collar off ‘em and they turn into lazy, rebellious problems, and we waste a week havin’ to beat all that independence outa ‘em.” Mako clenches her fist. Her veins are burning. “Come here.” The man smacks his leg, and Raleigh cringes and whines. “I said, come here, you little bitch!” Raleigh crouches against the wall, and Mako stands between him and the man.

“Maybe if you tried treating him like a human being, he’d listen to you!” She can’t believe this is allowed to happen. That people are allowed to treat ferals so horribly.

“Does that look human to you?” The man shoves past Mako and grabs Raleigh by the scruff of his neck. Raleigh snarls and sinks his teeth into the man’s hand. God, Mako wishes they wouldn’t have developed the viral inhibitors. This man deserves to become the thing he hates.

“Why you little…” the man backs off, shaking his hand. “Kearns, Evans, get in here. I’m gonna need some help with this one. And get me a collar. I’m not tryin’ to get him in a cage without one.” Mako watches two men shove themselves through the crowd that’s gathered at the door. They pause when they come up against Alexis Kaidanovsky, who’s blocking the doorway like a statue. Mako wishes he’s just stay there, immovable, but he shifts himself aside after a look from the Marshal. She can see Sasha behind him, and the Weis, and Herc. She hopes Chuck isn’t here. He’d only gloat.

With backup, the first Wall employee (he never even gave them a name, or Mako would rain down every traditional Japanese curse she knew on it) gets bolder.  “Hope you didn’t get used to that pretty little bleeding heart treating you like a human.” The man snaps. He slams a heavy boot into Raleigh’s ribs.  
“Stop!” Mako yells, but the man laughs.  
“It ain’t yours now, girlie. Stay out of it.” The man turns back to Raleigh, frowning.

“Mako. Come. This is not something you need to see.” Sasha’s hands are light but firm on Mako’s arms. She finds herself turning away. Away from Raleigh’s pleading eyes, the soft pained whines and whimpers. _Mako, please, help me._ She wants to shut out the Ghost Drift like she can close the door behind her, but it follows her. _Please make this stop. I don’t want to go back. Help me._ But her hands are tied. He’s not theirs anymore. And what good will telling anyone she’s a feral do now?


	12. Hong Kong Shatterdome-June 23

Mako's not lucky enough to avoid running into Chuck Fucking Hansen on the way back to her room. She can tell he’s heard the news, because there’s a gloating pride in his eyes. Mako’s irrational anger bleeds over, and she can’t help but think, _who told anyone about what happened with Gipsy? We don’t report to the UN anymore._ Logically she knows it was probably a tech on the ground, terrified at the thought of being killed in a nuclear meltdown, but she can _see_ the perverse joy Chuck would have had in his face, calling the people he knew had the power to send Raleigh back to that hell on earth.

“Did you do this?” Mako snaps.

“No, but I wish I’d thought of it, and a lot sooner too.” Chuck snaps. “You were too blind to see how dangerous he was, and he almost got you both killed!”

Mako’s detached numbness erupts into a rage. She catches Chuck’s leg and pins him on his back, driving her knee into his chest. “He’s not a monster, Chuck Hansen! You are!”

She snarls, and her hands are covered in blue scales and her tongue runs over razor-edged teeth. She’s never shifted before, and she hopes this doesn’t spread because in her Drift dream she was huge. There would be no way she wouldn’t destroy half the Shatterdome. Fortunately, the shift seems to stop itself there. Chuck half-shifts as well, fangs showing, fingernails hardening to claws. He snaps at her and she roars back.

Sasha is standing to the side, watching complacently, keeping an eye on the hall to keep anyone else from seeing this. Mako growls again and feels Chuck squirm under her. She releases her hold and he jumps up only for her to knock him down again. She rolls him over and sinks her short fangs into his ear, like she’s seen Herc do when he wants to remind Chuck who’s actually in charge. Chuck yelps.

“I’m only going to say this once, so listen,” she hisses into his bleeding ear. “You leave Raleigh and me alone. I could tear you apart right now, but I’m not going to, because as good as it would feel you’re not worth the trouble.” Chuck growls, snarls. She growls louder. “I’m done with you thinking you can push everyone around. Maybe no one else wants to deal with you, but I’ve had enough. So you clean up your act or the next time I’ll show much less restraint.” She lets him go and he skitters out from under her, shifting fully to dingo, tail between his legs. She sighs and turns to Sasha. “Let’s go. I need to get this bad taste out of my mouth.” She spits some of Chuck’s blood onto the floor.

She doesn’t look back but she can feel Chuck staring after her. She doesn’t let the tears come until she’s back in her room and Sasha has left her to herself. She doesn’t realize until then that this isn’t her room, it’s Raleigh’s. And Yancy’s sweater is still where she left it after washing it. She’d wanted it to be a surprise, after they Drifted.  
She buries her face in that old ratty sweater and lays on the bunk and sobs, imagining Raleigh back in the Alaskan winter, dragging himself through mud and snow every day to work, risking his life twenty stories in the air on those girders for barely enough food to keep him alive, fighting for his life in the cages. She doesn’t need to be there to see the faint spark of hope she’d been protecting falter and die. She can see as clearly as if she had some clairvoyant power how fast Raleigh will fade. Soon he’ll be the same starved, freezing, pitiful creature she saved. And all this was for nothing.

 _What do I do? We can’t force them to let us keep him. We have no power over that now._ The only solution where she and Raleigh stay together is for her to follow him to Alaska. She sits up, pulling the sweater over her hospital gown. It’s huge, halfway to her knees, and the sleeves flop over her hands. _What if I go to that life? How will I end up? What happens to me in that world?_  If she tells the truth maybe they’ll take her too. Maybe she can stay with Raleigh. That’s all she wants now. He was abandoned once. How can she be the next to break his heart, to leave him alone with another hole in his mind?  
She has to catch them before the flight takes off. She thinks she might have knocked three people down running to the cargo bay. She’s not sure. It’s all a blur until she slams through the doors and then everything (the helicopter, the contractors, _Sensei_ , the pilots) is still a blur aside from the cage on the loading dock and its single occupant. She crashes to her knees on the damp concrete, and then she feels the tears.  
“Raleigh. I’m so sorry.” She reaches through the bars to hold his hand. He’s not crying, just staring blankly at nothing. She doesn't want to think about what they've already done to him but she can see the evidence. He's bruised head to foot, and under those bruises are the raw red burns from the Drivesuit, still painfully unhealed, and the reason she can tell all this is that they never gave him clothes when they collared him and forced him to shift back.  He’s curled up, shivering convulsively in the damp air, and she can feel the thin trails of Ghost Drifting working their way back to Knifehead, the way they always do when he’s cold.  
He doesn't look at her, but she knows him well enough to sense the shame and humiliation in his posture. It's bad enough they're taking him back. It's worse that the whole Shatterdome can see him being treated like an animal; beaten, collared, naked, locked in a cage. His friends are here, his family, or "pack", or whatever. And her, his co-pilot.

“I’m going to tell them everything. I’ll tell them the truth. It was my fault.”

“No.” Raleigh’s whisper is sad and resigned. “Don’t do that to yourself, Mako. You know where you’ll end up if you do.” _Just like me. That’s what I told them after Knifehead and they sent me to the Wall._ “They need you here, in Gipsy.”

“I don’t have a co-pilot anymore.” She forces back tears. Raleigh doesn’t need to deal with her emotions on top of his own. She wants to say more, wants to tell him she’ll never find as compatible a partner, that she doesn’t want anyone else in her head but him, but there are footsteps behind her and Raleigh flinches.  
“Get away from it.” The man behind them, one of the Wall contractors, pushes her shoulder roughly. “It’s not yours anymore.”

“Stop it!” Mako stands, blood boiling. “You have no right to treat him like this!”

“He’s a feral. I have every right. Now get out of my way.”

“Fight me.” Mako knows it’s a stupid thing to say, it’s such a _Raleigh_ thing to say and she can’t understand how there’s already so much of him inside her head after just one Drift. The man looks ready to do just that, and Mako doesn’t have time to worry about what’s going to happen when she shifts into a freaking dragon right here on the loading bay. She feels the bones in her hands realigning, blue scales spreading like a rash.

Then _Sensei’s_ hands are over hers, and two other contractors are holding her opponent back. She wants to scream, tell them _let me at least kill him before they haul me off as a slave, let me do something that’s worth getting sent to the Wall for,_ but then she hears other voices behind her.  
“Wait!” Herc is waving something in the air; it looks like a dead cat. When he gets closer, she realizes it’s Alexis Kaidanovsky’s hat.

Herc hands the hat to _Sensei_ and says something Mako doesn’t hear. Sensei’s face brightens with the first real smile Mako has seen in months.

“I believe you said I was three thousand dollars short for that contract?” He’s pulling bills out of the hat, counting them into his hand. “Well, it looks like there’s three thousand right here to cover that, plus a hundred for the collar, plus a thousand to go toward your time and the fuel you wasted on this little snipe hunt.” He pulls the last of the money out of the hat and shoves it into the contractor’s hand. “Now why don’t you take off before it gets dark?”  
The man’s face is angrier by the second, but there’s nothing he can do. Stacker is buying the contract fairly.  
“Keys. Now!” Mako grabs for them from the man, and he’s so shocked he lets go without a fight. She unlocks the cage with trembling fingers, then reaches for Raleigh. He falls against her and she fumbles with the collar until she feels it unlatch. She leans against him, holding him as close as she can, feeling the hitching sobs shaking both of them apart and letting the broken pieces fall together in a perfect alignment.  
She can’t leave him. She barely moves when the others crowd around, only enough to take a blanket from Chuck (she’s honestly surprised he’s not being a complete asshole to Raleigh for once) and wrap it tightly around Raleigh.

“How?” She whispers once she’s capable of coherent speech again.  
“We pooled all the money we had. Every pilot, every Jaeger crew. Becket boy doesn’t deserve to go back to that hell.” Tendo is smiling softly. He puts his hand on Raleigh’s shoulder gently. Raleigh looks up at him, a sad smile breaking through the tears and bruises.

“Thank you.” He whispers, and Mako knows he’s saying thank you for so much more than the money. _Thank you for thinking I was worth something. For proving you all did care what happened to me. Thank you for being loyal. For being my pack._ He can trust them, and he knows it. And because he can trust them, Mako can too.

She stands up. “There’s something you all need to know.” Raleigh’s hand slips into hers and squeezes tightly, and she knows, no matter what, things will be okay. “I’m feral.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m quitting here for this installment, but if the response is enough to warrant it, I’ll probably write some more stories in this universe, finishing out the movie and also showing some aftermath.


End file.
